I trust Kay's second sight--she's a pixy, you see. Well, mostly you don't, these days. Kay's learned to shift! She can grow up, lose the green, hide the wings... pass as human, just short, delicate, with sharp ears hidden under a spiky mop changing color every week.

But in her true form, she can ride on my shoulder like a parakeet--though she rarely will. Too slow, when she can fly! As she just did, to land on my sill.

Kay is a pixy, so I feel uneasy on hearing that word "fiendish." She understands humans quite well, but she does love pranks. Things may get... drastic. "What exactly are you gonna do, Kay?" I ask warily.

"Knock some SENSE into her cunt, that's what!"

And she hops to the floor and stretches like a cat. Only most cats don't grow into girls with spiky blue (this week) hair. Naked girls. Kay sees me gawking (all these times, and I'm still not used to it) and laughs. She sweeps her hands down and clothes appear. A glamour for mortal eyes alone. It's a warm day, and Kay rarely bothers materializing real clothes in summer. Pixies don't sunburn. If anyone touches her, they'll get a sexy surprise--but I told you, Kay likes pranks.

Kay walks over toward Janet's house but pauses on the corner, looking round it with her second sight. Janet's alone in her house. No Kel. Perfect! In she goes, on her fiendish mission of mercy.

Ten minutes later they're spilling beer on the sofa. "So tell me about Kel, is he as hot as he looks? What's he do that's got you so..." and Kay giggles. And inside, feels a twinge of guilt. Not just for pretending. It goes much deeper. She swore never to beglamour a friend... but her gut says it's life or death, that Kelly is that bad.

So Kay leans into Janet, puts her arm around her, and hums a little song. A song not on the charts. A seduction song. She gazes into Janet's brown round eyes with her big green ones, big as pools, pools Janet is drowning dreamily in... and dreamily, she confesses how intense the sex is with Kel, like a drug she can't get enough of.

She blushes a moment when she hazily notices her hand's in her pants, no, her pants are gone, and she soon forgets Kay's watching. Only Kel is here, her lover, oh Kel, it feels so GOOD...

Kay has to blink, for the hot sticky aura of her own sex-spell fills the room, affecting even Kay. Wait, IS that just Kay's spell?

Or... Kelly's?

Kay's guilt evaporates along with her spell. No need of it; sympathetic resonance has triggered someone's lust-spell. Someone, or some thing, has Janet in thrall. She squirms happily on the couch, naked now, legs spread, rubbing herself stickily.

"Worse than I suspected" Kay thinks. "It's time."

She stands and breathes out. All of it out. The spells, the size, the skin, the humanity. Shrinks to her true self, green and gauze-winged. She leaps into the thick air and whirrs round the room, building up airspeed. She'll need a lot, and she's only got one chance to get it right.

Buzzing like a furious hummingbird, Kay does a last, fast figure eight, then dives at Janet like a kamikaze Barbie. POW! A hard blow right to the pubic bone.

(No, no, she didn't dive inside Janet--this isn't just one more pixy penetration dream! We've all had a million of 'em. No, this is much more mysterious...)

Ow, ow, ow, ow... Kay sits on Janet's cunt in a headachy daze.

"Whaaaa...?" says Janet, and comes to. For a moment more, Kelly hovers over her, those lips, that cock... and then Janet says "Ew!" and Kel pops like a bubble. Not just now... forever.

"Kay, what are you... why are you sitting on my clit? Uh... why am I naked?" Janet frowns blearily and then focuses. "Kay, are you all right?"

Janet picks Kay up with terrible care, like a cracked egg. Lays her on a big pillow, while Janet dresses as fast as she can, talking to Kay constantly. "Kay, stay awake. You can't sleep yet."

She carries the pillow out to her car and drives Kay to the emergency room.

A good thing she did. The doctor's diagnosis is emphatic. "I've never seen such a classic case of pixy concussion. Three weeks rest at least! No shapeshifting, no flying, and no raves! Do you hear me, Kay?"

That wakes Kay up. Half up. "No RAVES?" she roars, then winces. He's right. No nothing, for a few days at least.

So she had lots of free time to be interviewed. So did Janet, surgically separated from Kel at last. I was the one who found interviewing them hard. I'm kind of shy about sex, though Kay and Janet are both matter-of-fact about it. Hearing them talk about their great not-exactly-sex-scene embarrassed me, but it also turned me on. Have to admit I'm attracted to both of them. Always have been, but never admitted to them.

For I was under a spell too, cast long ago. My mom was from a generation that just shut up and got married and never even asked themselves if guys turned them on. Or off, as the case may be. I've never asked "Uh, mom, are you gay and never got around to admitting it?" But she assumed, and taught me to assume, that women in general have little interest in guys. I unconsciously expect to be shot down, not because I'm ugly or creepy, but because who the hell would want a guy, ever, for anything?

But seeing how sexually intense Janet got, broke my spell. Whether her lust was triggered by a curse or not. Because love-spells can't make you desire--just evoke and steer it.

And I do desire them, desire them both--human and pixy. And when Kay's well, I need to sit down with them both and speak up--or I'm no better than Kelly the love-spell sneak.

It'll hurt--so embarrassing to admit I've been dishonest. I'm afraid they'll both laugh at me, or kindly shoot me down, or (at best) say "Well? You have to choose!" Because I can't. I love them both.

But just as Kay did what she had to do for her friend, I have to be honest. Despite the short-term headache.

NOTES IN THE MORNING

This dream is less mysterious than it sounds--and darker. You see, I know exactly what provoked it. That day I'd been reading TITHE by Holly Black.

Kay and her best friend Janet are both single teens. Not many quality guys in their small seashore town. Drunken, mediocre sex is easy to find. But love?

Kay has a secret. She's seen fairies since childhood. One of her best friends is a little winged pixy.

No wonder Kay sees pixies. Turns out she's one herself--a changeling, left by the fairies to be raised by mortals. When she breaks the spell allowing her to pass as human, she's green and winged.

On Halloween, a gorgeous guy seduces Janet. But he's not human. He's a kelpie, a water-dwelling were-horse who seduces mortals--not to get in their pants, but in their lungs. Kelpies get off on drowning...

Ominous! My dream borrowed all this from TITHE to warn me a seductive spell has me in thrall, and its intent is deadly.

One thing's not from the book: Kay's headache. That's real. I've been ill on and off for months. A mystery virus--low fever, achy head and shoulders. The doctor just says my system's slow to throw it off. Why? Some possibilities:

I'm run down--neglecting myself, overworking.

Just bad luck--a new, more stubborn viral variant. Some things are just chance.

A sort of emergency brake? It's kept me from dating or looking for full-time work. All I've done is art, dreamwork and school. Trapped me in Faerie, like a changeling?

The dream suggests the headaches aren't meant to do anything--they're mere side effects of my soul's effort to knock me awake, break a deadly spell. Knock some sense into my cunt!

But what spell? Some sex disaster? Unlikely; I haven't met any prospects lately, or even (if we're being honest) looking seriously. Too much work. I mean, too much schoolwork, but also, just talking to anyone sexy feels like work. Stressful and not worth the angst. So I silence my sexual feelings--just as I do in the dream. Not good! And the dream flat-out orders me to force myself to speak up when I'm attracted to someone, uncomfortable or not.

So what's seducing me? Work itself? My friend Danita mentioned today that it took her months to heal her foot. She only became pain-free when she quit working for weeks to truly focus on getting well. She put it off because she was making serious money... in exchange for constant pain. I mean, would you let someone torture you for pay?

No, of course you wouldn't. My dream's only about me. And even I'm not that bad. I'm not a workaholic. And my friends aren't obsessive. And America's not feverish and crazy. And the world's not simultaneously seduced by corporate toys and fundamentalist rage.

No, it's all fine, it never happened, it was just a dream, a sexy dream, don't even try to wake up from that sexy dream...